“Oh, tough guy. We see a lot of that. They come in that door hard as boiler plate but they don’t go out that way. They slink out like the yellow rats they are.”
I had to grin. “I saw this one,” I said. “Bugs ties a knot in Elmer’s shotgun in the end and he blows his face off.”
Kowalski snorted. Grabowska looked at him quickly. The lieutenant coughed and took his pipe out of his mouth and made a face and waved smoke from in front of it.
Stamenoff returned then, with someone I recognized. It was a tall, slender black man, loose-jointed like Kowalski, in patched and faded denims and a black T-shirt. He had his officer’s ID pinned to the front of his ragged jacket, but I knew the big Afro and the way his cold cigarette dribbled from one corner of his mouth. He was one of the two men I had spoken with in John Woldanski’s old shop on Trowbridge. He looked at me sleepily, without showing surprise.
I said, “What’s the matter, they don’t pay you enough here?”
The corner without a cigarette in it turned up slightly.
Grabowska looked from one of us to the other. “You met?”
“He was in DePugh’s place asking about Woldanski,” the black cop said. “I’ve been moled in there three weeks.”
“Oh yeah, fence detail. How’s it look?” Grabowska squinted at the ID. “Foster, is it?”
“Forster, sir. It looks sweet. I rang up a thousand in hot tape decks once when DePugh was busy out front hassling a meter maid.”
Kowalski said, “Brother, are we in the wrong business.”
Forster lifted the free corner again. The captain asked him if he knew Woldanski.
“Not to talk to. But when I was getting ready to go under I saw his name a lot on old reports. I never heard of him when DePugh was looking,” he told me.
“Never mind that,” Grabowska snapped. “You know he got spliffed today.”
“The sergeant said.” He tilted his bushy head toward Stamenoff.
“DePugh say anything about Woldanski after Walker left?”
“No, sir.”
I said, “His flesh was still warm when I found him. He couldn’t have been dead more than half an hour. What was DePugh doing around four-thirty?”
“Counting his money, maybe. It was a slow day. He closed up at four and I came here.”
“Maybe you’d better talk to DePugh,” I told Kowalski.
“What a sleuth. I never would’ve thought of it.” He ground his teeth on the pipe-stem.
Grabowska puckered. “These monkeys don’t retire. Could be they were laying some things off through each other that were smoking too much for one man’s mitts. DePugh got rattled when a guy came around asking about Woldanski like a detective and powdered him to keep him from squawking.”
“Except he’s not the get-rattled type,” Forster said.
“Everyone is, if you shake hard enough.” The captain looked at me. “Who else knew you were looking for the old man?”
“Lee Horst. You know him, maybe.”
“Horst?”
“Answer man,” said Kowalski. “We kept stubbing our toes on him at County. You want it, he knows it, for a fee. Unless you’re on the square. Then he’s dumb as a baseball bat.”
I shook my head, killing my stub in a copper ashtray full of glistening black plugs from his bulldog. “He’s square. Maybe not all his customers are, but he’s in a legitimate business or Detroit Metro would have turned the key on him ten years ago.”
“For a guy who wouldn’t tip over his client, you sure gave him up without a struggle,” Grabowska said.
Kowalski said, “Horst is a wall. Throwing cops at him is like whacking tennis balls off a board fence. Lend me the riot detail and half of nightside, give us two days, and maybe he’ll tell us his telephone number, that being listed. He’s bigger than Stamenoff. No one’s bigger than Stamenoff.”
The mountainous cop grunted.
A telephone rang. Kowalski swept a dozen file folders off the instrument and barked his name into the mouthpiece. He listened for several moments, then said “Okay” and hung up. He turned to Grabowska.
“That was Wasylyk from the clerk’s office. The empty house was Woldanski’s. He built the new one eight years ago and moved into it after his wife died. Wasylyk called the morgue at the Free Press for that part.”
The captain rubbed his hands in that way he had. “Okay, run with it. Crank DePugh in here and run a check on that stuff in Woldanski’s basement, see is any of it on the hot sheet. Foster here will help with that—”
“Forster, sir,” the black cop corrected. “And, sir, I don’t think we should lean on DePugh just yet. It’d blow three weeks under cover.”
“Homicide takes front seat,” Kowalski reminded him. “Sorry.”
“Yes, sir.”
The captain looked at me, and I was a door again. “You get this scroat’s statement?” he asked Kowalski.
“Not yet.”
“Get it and get him out of my building. Don’t think we’re cutting you loose, keyholer. You’re still our Number One if we crap out on DePugh. And whichever way it winds up hanging, I’ll remember you.”
“I’m flattered. Who’d you say you were again?”
“Keep it up. I don’t want to take the slightest chance of ever liking you.” He left.
Kowalski made another face and knocked out his pipe into the ashtray. “Damn generous of Captain Cookies to show us how to conduct a homicide investigation. You married, Walker?”
“Not lately.”
“Kids?”
I shook my head.
“Don’t have any,” he advised. “Sooner or later every married man with kids gets the Grabowska he deserves. Okay, Forster, thanks for coming in. Sorry about the stakeout.”
“I’m used to it, Lieutenant.” He opened the door.
I said, “Funny, you don’t look Polish.”
He smiled the tired crooked smile without disturbing the cigarette in his mouth. “That’s good,” he said. “That’s the first time I heard that one today.” He went out.
Stamenoff jingled his keys and change and grunted.
19
IT WAS DARK when I got my car out of the police parking lot. The Luger was still there. I drove straight home without thinking about Eric Rynearson’s shop on Jefferson. His telephone recording had said he closed at seven, and anyway I didn’t feel like leaning on anything harder than a mattress, not even for someone like Louise Starr. I bought myself a drink in the kitchen while my supper was heating up, and I bought myself another afterwards while listening to one of the hourly news reports on the radio for a mention of the murder in Hamtramck. There was none. There probably wouldn’t be, unless the cops tipped the press about the merchandise in the basement. You have to dress up murder these days if you want air time. I bought a few more and then went to bed, expecting to lie awake a while. I didn’t. I didn’t even dream. I slept as deeply as I ever do, but it wasn’t the sleep of the dead. No sleep ever is.
I woke up with something heavy and hairy sitting on my face clanging a bell next to my ear. The noise continued while I got the thing’s sharp feet off my eyelids, but the thing crawled to the top of my head, balancing there with its claws sunk in my scalp. One of its hot smelly paws had been inside my mouth and all over my tongue. It went on clanging the bell. It was trying to pretend it was the telephone ringing in the living room, but I knew better. Its weight was dragging the skin tight over the bones of my face and making my eyes start.
I stuck my feet inside slippers and fumbled into my robe on the way out of the bedroom. The bell rang and rang. I leaned my forehead against my great-grandmother’s clock. 4:01. I got the telephone receiver in both hands finally and the silence when I lifted it was so sudden and sharp it hurt as much as the noise. My hairy thing snickered in my left ear.
“Amos? Hello?”
My demon reacted to the voice as if someone had waved a crucifix in its flat ugly face. A silver cross. It leaped off my head and scampered into whate
ver dark corner its kind lives in, leaving only dull pain and a faint stench of brimstone behind. I hoped it hadn’t laid any eggs.
“Second.” I rested the receiver on the little table next to my only easy chair and went back into the bedroom. When I came out and sat down and picked it up again the voice said:
“You just lit a cigarette, didn’t you?”
“No.” I blew smoke.
“Uh-huh.”
“Am I awake at this hour for a message from the American Lung Association?”
“I earned that,” Karen said, after a beat. “Sometimes my work gets in the way of the rest of me. You know what that’s like.”
“I’ve heard stories.”
“You sound hung over.”
“It’s the connection. A lot of people think that when they call me at four a.m.”
“Amos, are you all right?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s good.” She sounded unconvinced. “I wouldn’t want you not to be.”
I let smoke trickle noiselessly out my nostrils and said nothing.
She said, “I’m sorry about this afternoon. Yesterday afternoon, that is. I guess you got to me with that crack about the gorgeous blonde more than I wanted to admit. I’m sure it’s true, but no woman likes to be reminded there are prettier women.”
“I thought maybe it was because you didn’t want to talk about Young Dr. Kildare. Tim.”
“That wasn’t it. Why do you keep bringing him up?” She paused. It was very quiet on her end. “Listen, my shift just finished. I’m sort of on overdrive and I know I won’t be able to sleep. Is it too late to come over and unwind?”
“I thought you were going sailing tomorrow. Today.”
“Tim cancelled. He’s studying for an exam.”
“It’s quite a hike over here. Why don’t we meet at your place?”
“No, I’m too keyed up for home. Besides, I’m the one who got you out of bed. According to Emily Post that carries certain responsibilities.”
“I’ll dig out the tea cozy.” I gave her directions and we spent a couple of minutes saying good-bye.
After hanging up I sat there and finished my cigarette. Then I went into the bathroom and stripped and stood for five minutes under a shower of icicles. I shaved, admiring the pinkish cast in the whites of my eyes. I made the bed and broke a fresh shirt out of the bureau and put it on with the pants to the blue suit. I finished dressing, went into the kitchen, plugged in the coffee maker, and washed the supper dishes I’d left in the sink, then got the carpet sweeper and went over the rug in the living room. I dumped ashtrays and dusted. By that time the coffee was ready. I had time for two cups and another cigarette and then the door buzzer sounded.
“You are hung over,” she said.
She was still wearing her white nurse’s uniform under a brown leather car coat that glistened wetly in the light from the lamp behind me, but she had undone her hair, which glowed softly reddish, like a good painting in the right illumination. Her face was roses and milk. Looking at her, I took in some air and let it out.
She put her arms around my neck and we kissed. I drew her inside and kicked the door shut, setting the lock with my elbow. When we came unstuck she said, “You’ve done this before.”
I made the diplomatic response and helped her out of her coat.
I hung it in the closet and we walked into the living room with an arm around each other’s waist like school kids in the hall by the lockers. She looked around. “You’re a pretty good housekeeper. I thought bachelors always had empty beer cans lying around and socks that needed darning.”
“That’s one stereotype. The other is a gourmet cook with a different kind of hanger for everything he wears and one of those dimmer switches on the wall.”
“Which one are you?”
“When my socks get holes in them I throw them out and buy new ones. But only if the holes show outside my shoes. And when my lights get dim I know I forgot to send Detroit Edison a check that month.” I sat her down in the sofa. “Coffee? No powdered creamer, sorry. You’ll have to take milk.”
“In that case I’ll have a drink.”
“Scotch okay?”
“With water.”
I went into the kitchen and splashed water into a pair of small barrel glasses and colored it with Hiram Walker’s. When I carried them into the living room she was standing by my cheap stereo, leafing idly through the record albums in the open cabinet.
“You have an interesting collection. I’ve never heard of some of these singers.”
“Some of them have been dead longer than you’ve been alive.”
“Could I hear one?”
“Take your pick.”
She did some more leafing, slid one out and studied the picture on the cover. “She’s pretty. Such a delicate profile. I think someone must have hurt her.”
It was Helen Morgan. I said, “What makes it she was hurt?”
“She just has that crushed-petal look. This one, I think.” She tapped the cover.
“Go ahead. That spike goes through the hole there in the middle.”
“Thanks,” she said dryly. She slid the record out of the inner sleeve and spindled it and found the ON switch. The Morgan started warbling.
“Plaintive.” She accepted the glass I held out.
I lifted mine. “Voices from the grave.”
“Voices.”
We drank. She moved toward the sofa again, swaying a little to the music, hugging herself with the glass in one hand. I watched her with frankly carnal interest. She sat down and crossed her smooth legs. Louise Starr got the same effect by just crossing her ankles. But there are times when you want rich chocolate and there are times when nothing but sharp peppermint will do.
She looked at me for a while, and then she said, “What did you and Martha talk about today? Yesterday, damn it.”
“Michael.”
“That’s all?”
“Mostly. Some other stuff, about who’s tough and who’s not and what makes them one or the other. Why?”
“I don’t know. She seemed — furtive when I visited her later. She was quite willing to talk about anything but your visit. Whenever the subject came up she changed it. I thought maybe —” She shrugged and nibbled at her drink.
“Maybe what?”
Her gaze got direct. “Amos, did you talk her into hiring you again to investigate Michael’s death?”
“I don’t try to talk people into things. I’m generally too busy trying to talk my way out of this or that. Trying to persuade Mrs. Evancek to do something she didn’t want to is not my idea of time spent constructively.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I should know better. It’s just—”
“That they can be such children at that age.”
“Well, yes” — she put starch in her glare — “they can. You don’t spend as much time with them as I do, you don’t know the games they play, their simple and touching deviousness.”
“I’ve worked with them and for them. A lot of my business comes from people who are getting ready to die and want to see the sons and daughters they let go of years ago before they do. I’ve spent more time in nursing homes than a Spanish-American War veteran. Old people aren’t cute. They’re mean and kind and petty and impressive and pathetic and sometimes nice, just like the rest of us. The only difference is they’ve outgrown the rules you and I have to live by. Everything they do is serious because death is sitting on their shoulders and blowing in their ears.”
She lowered the level in her glass some more. Then she set it down on my scratched coffee table and sat up straight with her hands on her crossed knee, looking at me. “You have a preoccupation with death this morning. What’s wrong? No snappy lines, please.”
“Mornings I think about death,” I said. “I’m a little closer to it each time I roll out of bed, as who isn’t? Also I stumbled over another stiff yesterday.”
I watched her face work, and then she asked the question.
“ ‘Another’?”
“It’s my hobby. Whenever I find one I throw up my hands and call it out like an out-of-state license plate. So far I’m way ahead of the pack.”
“And who did this one belong to?”
“An old fence named Woldanski, in Hamtramck. He found a broken neck at the bottom of the stairs in an empty house on his lot. You’ll read about it in the H section of today’s paper unless war breaks out or the mayor buys a new suit.”
“Was he murdered?”
“Probably. In my hobby they don’t count if they weren’t.”
“Do you have to joke about it?”
I drank some Scotch. Listened to Helen Morgan.
“Dumb question,” Karen said. She rubbed the back of her neck. “I’m strung like a guitar. Not thinking straight.”
That seemed to be my cue. I set down my glass next to hers and moved behind the sofa and worked my thumbs in the hollows of her shoulders. Her hair smelled like fresh air. She made little purring noises.
“That’s nice. Where did you learn to do that?”
“I used to strangle chickens for the Kiwanis Broil.”
Her knotted muscles loosened grudgingly under my thumbs. She was all taut sinew under smooth flesh like a silken sheath.
“Did this Woldanski know something about Michael?”
I got my hands away from her neck. She turned her head a little, bringing one eyelash into profile. I said, “Listen closely, there will be a quiz later. I’m not looking into Michael’s death today. I wasn’t looking into Michael’s death yesterday. I won’t be looking into Michael’s death tomorrow. Michael is as dead as Caruso, as dead as last summer’s grass, as dead as this conversation. I just got through saying I don’t have to look for dead things. They throw themselves at me like ale-wives fighting to reach shore.”
The record played. Helen was asking someone to give her something to remember him by, but it didn’t sound as if she expected anything to come of it.
Karen said, “It’s just that there seems to be an awful lot of Polish names cropping up in your vocabulary lately. What am I supposed to think?”
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